


Elements of Consolation

by eye_of_a_cat



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Alien Rituals, Earth-Minbari War, Episode s02e21 Comes the Inquisitor, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Minbari
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 00:35:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14780285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eye_of_a_cat/pseuds/eye_of_a_cat
Summary: "A part of you is always looking down, even now. I think if you truly saw what I had become, then I would lose you as well."





	Elements of Consolation

**Author's Note:**

> Set immediately after Season 2 episode, 'Comes the Inquisitor'. Originally posted on LiveJournal in 2004.

It should not be wrong, Lennier thought, to watch someone sleep.  
  
He knew, of course, that her true face was private and that it was not his place to see her like this. If she had not been hurt by Kosh’s Inquisitor, and if Doctor Franklin had not refused to let her out of MedLab without someone to accompany her, he would most certainly not be kneeling at her side now, watching her chest rise and fall with each breath. As it was, however, he could not leave her, and why should that be wrong? He told himself this as he watched her, half-whispering the words with each breath, but he knew the answer. Maybe it was not wrong, to stay with her now - but it was not right either, not with these terrible thoughts he could no longer ignore, and yet he could not look away.  
  
It had not always been this way. He admired her from the moment he met her, yes, and even now he found it difficult to believe he had been chosen for an honour so great as to be with her, but this… this, he had not expected. He knew she was grateful for his devotion, and he thought he would be content to serve her. He had never imagined he would want more.  
  
Admitting this to himself brought shame, and he found some comfort in that at least, knowing that his reactions were honourable even if his thoughts were not. But in that balance between disgrace and loyalty, and the brief peace he found there, he kept hearing a question that he should neither ask nor answer.  
  
Delenn half-turned, bringing one hand up to her face and mumbling something he couldn’t hear. For one horrifying moment, he thought she _knew_ \- and then he realised she was dreaming.  
  
In her sleep, she cried out quietly and ducked her head, an instinctive gesture which would have hidden her face beneath the protective headbone had she been fully Minbari. He shifted uncomfortably. Why would she feel threatened? He couldn’t stand to think of her reliving her encounter with Kosh’s Inquisitor, but he didn’t want to wake her when she so needed to rest. But if she was in pain... Hesitantly, he reached out a hand. Her skin was softer than a Minbari’s should be; for a moment, his fingertips stroked the unfamiliar surface in a gentle circle.  
  
_What do you want, Lennier?_  
  
I want to serve and live and die with honour, he thought. I want to know that Delenn is safe, from this, from everything. I want it to have been me who saved her from Kosh’s Inquisitor, and not Captain Sheridan. And... and I want...  
  
He swallowed, collected his breath, and said “Delenn?” in a voice less calm than he intended. She didn’t react, and so he rested his hand on her shoulder as gently as he dared, and repeated her name.  
  
She was awake in an instant, eyes wide and terrified, her hand quickly grabbing his as she struggled into a sitting position. She stared at his face for what seemed like eternity, and then released her grip on his hand to cradle it between both of her own, her tense frame sagging in relief. “Lennier.” He noticed the red, scorched marks on her wrists as she caught her breath. “Lennier,” she said again, almost too quietly for him to hear.  
  
“You - you were dreaming.”  
  
“Yes...” Her voice was distant, her eyes flickering over the room as if she was afraid something might be hidden in its shadows.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, looking down.  
  
“No. No, Lennier, please, there is no need to look so apologetic.” Her breathing had calmed, but that terrible lost look was still in her eyes. If he could have helped her earlier... but what was worse? To abandon her there in torment, or to disobey when she begged him to leave?  
  
“Are you in pain?” he asked.  
  
She looked down at her hands, now folded in her lap, and at the burns that circled her wrists. “A little,” she said. “Do you think he would have been less able to hurt me if I had still been entirely Minbari?”  
  
“I...” He rested a hand over hers, covering the marks on her wrists. “I do not think that matters,” he said. “I will bring you something to help the pain, and you should sleep.”  
  
“It does matter, Lennier.” She did not look at him, and she did not seem to have heard the rest of his words. “The man Kosh sent, he kept asking me the same question. He said, _Who are you?_ But how can I know who I am, when I do not even know _what_ I am?”  
  
_What do you want, Lennier?_  
  
He wanted her not to suffer like this. “You are Delenn. You are Minbari.” He sounded angrier than he intended to, but that anger was directed at the Vorlons, not at her. Why would Kosh tell her to undergo this transformation, and then punish her for it? She believed in the wisdom of the Vorlons, and this doubt, this terror - this was how they repaid her?  
  
She smiled, fleetingly, and it did not reach her eyes. “How can I be Minbari when our own people no longer think I am?”  
  
“Your soul is still Minbari,” he said.  
  
She shook her head. “To be Minbari is to be part of our people, Lennier. To think and act for all Minbari, rather than the individual. This is what we are.” She touched one of the bruises that marked her arms. “I have seen how our people look at me.”  
  
“There are some who do not yet understand, yes, but -”  
  
“It is everyone, Lennier.” Her voice sounded so terribly sad.  
  
“I do not look at you like that.” And he did not look away, even when the desire to mumble the words into a bow nearly overwhelmed him.  
  
She smiled again, and rested her hand on his face. “But you will not look at me at all. A part of you is always looking down, even now. I think if you truly saw what I had become, then I would lose you as well.”  
  
“I have sworn to stay at your side through all things,” he said. “You will not lose me.”  
  
He meant to look away, even so, and get to his feet so that he could bring her something for the physical pain if he could do nothing else, but her hand was now on the back of his headbone and holding him firmly in place. “Look at me, Lennier,” she said, and he could not disobey.  
  
He had no wish to stare at her as though she was some alien thing for spectators to marvel at. He knew that the body was only a shell for the soul to occupy, and her new form was no more than an outward symbol of what she had already become, a bridge between the humans and the Minbari. He knew that nothing he could see in the physical detail of her face would matter. He knew all that, and yet... and yet he could not look away.  
  
As a child in temple, he had been taught that the danger in saying _I want_ lay in the first word as well as the last. He had sat cross-legged on a flagged stone floor, barely old enough to be allowed to attend with the other children, as the priest told them the word _I_ was more terrible than anything else in their language. A child’s truth, perhaps, but one that lost none of its meaning as he grew older. When the first of his parents died, and he listened to the voices of the adults joining in a whispered prayer for the poor child, he held that truth close to his chest and it stilled his sobs. When the second died less than a year later, in that explosion of fire and metal that had once been the _Black Star_ , that truth brought him strength.  
  
All of Minbar wept for Dukhat’s murder, all of Minbar fought the hated and cowardly humans, and then all of Minbar laid down their arms together and tried to make peace out of the ruins of war. The pain was not his alone, and so the burning hatred inside him was not his to hold to himself and nurture. He could not extinguish it completely, but he could use it as fuel to work ever harder to serve. What he wanted was not important. That truth made him everything he tried to become, aided his studies and echoed in every word of his prayers. It was why he had been sent to Delenn, and why she valued him so highly. He could not abandon it now. And still, he could not look away from her.  
  
The colour of her skin was changed, and marked in places with faint bruises. Were humans so easily damaged? He supposed that the bruises were not serious injuries, but they were there nonetheless. The protective bone over her eyes had been hollowed and smoothed away, and even her headbone no longer framed her face, its last curves barely visible where they were covered by her skin. So Minbari, and yet so alien. He felt himself reaching towards her as if he was in a dream, but it was not until his fingers touched her skin that he regained enough sense to pull his hand away, head lowered in shame, murmuring an apology.  
  
When he looked up once again, hesitantly, Delenn took his hand in her own and placed it back on her face, guiding his fingertips over the almost undetectable curves of the headbone underneath her skin. He said nothing, but he knew that his surprise, or his fear, or any of the hundred other things he felt, must have shown in his face. She moved his hand gradually downwards, following the curve of her jaw. Her eyes met his, and she smiled, and for the first time he could see her soul freed of its dark shadows.  
  
Her hand returned to join its twin, fingers laced together behind his headbone, and she bowed her head almost imperceptibly. All his hesitation vanished as he traced fingertips over her every inch of her face, feeling the shape of the bone underneath, the softness of her skin. Her hair brushed against the back of his hands, and he luxuriated in the sensation, letting curls tumble and fall over his fingers. The bone beneath the hair had not disappeared, and he could feel its ridges underneath the skin, faint but not completely gone.  
  
He allowed his fingertips to follow the curves of her headbone up, until they broadened and swept around over its crown. Perhaps this was wrong, but how could it be, when every tiny movement of her head followed his touch and she turned her face into his palm, her lips brushing against his wrist? Perhaps he should try to stop this now, but already it was too late to wish he had acted differently. He realised, in some distant, dreamlike way, that his arm was now curled around her back, and she was close to him, so close. He could feel her skin through the brief layer of silk, and it seemed as though the protective bone plate over her spine was gone too, even less noticeable than what remained of her headbone.  
  
He traced one hand down her back, trying to be as gentle as possible, knowing but never fully believing that her body was not so vulnerable as it now felt. She murmured words that he was not sure whether he heard or imagined, and leaned back into his hand, and he no longer knew whether he was awake or dreaming. Her hands followed the curve of his own headbone down to the tunic fastening just below his neck, and then smoothed over bare skin on his shoulders as she pushed the garment away.  
  
He could not tell whether she brought him down to lie with her or whether he simply followed. A part of him still noted with detached fascination every new thing it found: the sound of her breath, the sighs she made in response to fingernails brushed lightly over the back of her neck, the warmth of her skin pressed against his.  
  
_What do you want?_  
  
I want to be the answers to her questions, he thought, and the power of those words turned insubstantial as smoke and drifted away.  
  
It seemed as if an eternity passed before she pulled back from him, breaking apart their kiss. One of her hands rested against his shoulder while the other continued in its course over his back, tracing the curves of blue which radiated from his spine as if she could see them herself. “Who am I?” she asked.  
  
“You are Minbari,” he replied without needing to think. “You are one of us, just as you have always been.”  
  
She smiled, and kissed him lightly on the crown of his head. “If you say so, then it is true,” she said.  
  
He suspected words were no longer appropriate here, just as regret and pain and thought had all begun to fade away. But he needed to know, and so he asked her as she caressed his face, “Who am I, to make you believe this?”  
  
She pulled him close again, so that he could feel her voice on his skin as much as hear it. “You are everything I have tried to be,” she said.  
  
Then all words were lost, and any part of him which would speak against this disappeared, and nothing in the universe existed apart from her hands sparking fire under his skin as they moved in ways he had never even dared to dream about. She guided him so gently he could barely tell where her own movement stopped and his began, and her every touch was bliss. Feeling her so close to him in every way possible, it did not even surprise him how their bodies fit together as if they were made to do so, as if he had been created for this, only this, and nothing more.

 ~*~

Afterwards they lay for a while, cradled in each other’s warmth, and talked about unimportant things. There was a life before this, where wars and politics did not matter. She kept one arm curled around his neck, her hand resting on the back of his headbone. “You are not bored with these stories yet?” she asked him after a time, her face breaking into a smile.

“On any other day, I would be finalising your schedule for tomorrow,” he told her, and watched her smile grow broader. “I think I prefer this.”

“Then maybe I should send you away again,” she said. “I could not allow my aide to avoid such important tasks simply because he found other things more entertaining, could I?”

“Perhaps for a while longer,” he said, and kissed her again as she laughed.

When she slept, she curled up against him and rested her head on his shoulder, and he did not dare move in case he woke her. He watched her until he fell asleep himself, and her face was peaceful at last.

~*~

In the morning, they did not need to discuss which rituals were appropriate. What they had shared could not be the beginning of anything greater. The rituals would confirm they both accepted that, and he did not need to remind himself why they were needed.

Still, they did not feel the way he was sure they should. During the meal he and Delenn prepared together, he did not speak, and kept his head bowed so he would not meet her eye. Meditation did not bring the peace it was meant to, and the words of prayer tasted bitter and metallic in his mouth. Her palm pressed against his over the candles was cold.

More than he had ever wanted anything, he wanted to break the silence that came afterwards, in which he should reflect on past and future and self. He wanted to take her hand and say he loved her, he would always love her, he would do anything for her, if only she would not send him away. It could not change anything - she was destined for greater futures than him - but still he wanted to say it, just to hear the words out loud and know she heard them too.

And then what? She would back away from him in horror, the glass of the candle-holders tormenting him with a hundred reflections of her face. She would get to her feet without looking at him, and he would watch her and then bow his head in shame, wishing that there was some way to take back his words. She would cry, perhaps, or she would be furious with him, or both. She would tell him to leave her and leave the station, and he would.

He could never tell her. The breaking of trust would not only be in what he felt, but also in his decision to admit it and therefore make it something she must play a part in as well. Even if he had considered it, in some previous moment of foolishness, it would be impossible now; that terrible betrayed look would return to her eyes, and he could not be the cause of that. And yet, her fingers brushed his palm as she lifted her hand away from his own, and before he knew it he almost said the words out loud.

When the ritual was over, and he got up to leave, she placed a hand on his arm and waited patiently until he looked at her. “I...” she began, and then seemed to reconsider, and then smiled. “I cannot imagine a life without you in it,” she said, taking his hand and placing it on her chest.

In a moment, his pain was gone.

“I know,” he said.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: 
> 
> 1\. Lennier losing family on the Black Star is canon, from the episode 'There All The Honor Lies'. 
> 
> 2\. Delenn’s last line (“I cannot imagine...”) is, of course, not mine. It turns up in the show twice: Sheridan says it to Delenn, and then Delenn says it to Lennier.


End file.
